Securities Commission (SC) has recently announced that it has reprimanded Remitano, a popular peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency platform, for operating a Digital Asset Exchange (DAX) in Malaysia without authorisation. Remitano has been added to the Investor Alert list in 2020 and to take further action, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has been requested to block access to the cryptocurrency platform.
At the time of writing, Remitano is inaccessible in Malaysia unless connected via VPN. Remitano has also issued a notice on their platform informing users may face problem accessing remitano.com and suggests using their other alternative domains.
According to the Securities Commission, operating a DAX without obtaining approval from SC as a Registered Market Operator (RMO) is an offence under Section 7 of the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007. Violators can be fined up to RM10 million or put behind bars for not more than 10 years, or both.
In a notice published on Tuesday, SC has urged all investors to immediately cease trading through Remitano and to withdraw all of their investments before the site is blocked permanently. Apart from blocking access to the website, SC has also requested Google and Apple to disable Remitano’s mobile application for Malaysia.
SC has been cracking down on unauthorised online platforms in Malaysia which also include Binance and eToro. Recently, Binance has introduced a new payment option for users to buy or sell cryptocurrency with eWallets. Following that announcement, Grab has issued a notice that GrabPay users are not allowed to perform cryptocurrency transactions with their eWallet especially on platforms that are not authorised by SC. You can find the list of unauthorised platforms here.
At the moment, there are only 3 DAX platforms that are authorised to operate in Malaysia which include Luno, SINEGY and Tokenize. In these platform, only 4 type of cryptocurrencies can be traded, namely Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP) and Litecoin (LTC).
